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So what did you do to stop the head gasket blowing and torching the blocks?


Getting waaaay down there.. But I know you want more..



Chris..

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When I first put the engine together I used a Cometic gasket based of a standard BBD . This gasket has relief cuts encroaching into the firing ring seal to accommodate the in-line valve placement.The dowel pins on the heads are close to the bore when you get to 4.5" bores and consequently that zone has the greatest distance between head bolts.
I think a few small factors might of added up to a week zone for the cylinder preasure to escape and damage the block and cylinder head. ( no my dowel pins were not holding my head up )





You can see in the picture that even the dowel hole is in the sealing ring area. The physical properties of the gasket made failure only a matter of time ( actually a matter of preasure but time sounds more dramatic )

So its on to plan B

- more clamping force on the affected area
- remove dowels from beside the bore zone.
- physically hold the gasket in place with o-ring